Diplomacy Fulfilled
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: En route to a diplomatic conference, Sarek and Amanda discover that not all alien delicacies are so innocuous. Lighthearted romance. Sister story to Diplomacy Awry. Sa/Am with hints of Sp/Ch.


How many years had it been since she was last a guest on the starship _Enterprise_? Amanda could not quite remember, although she had thought that the date of Sarek's heart problems and that hurried operation would be etched on her mind forever. She stretched her memory. It was 2268, of course. The following year, with Sarek's renewed vigour, had been such a whirlwind of events and functions and journeys on anonymous transport ships that the dates had blurred in her mind.

Very little had changed on the Enterprise in that time, except perhaps the captain's response to diplomatic demands. This conference was being held in the same room as it had en route to Babel, but the room had obviously been carefully dressed with artworks and flourishes calculated to please the Malovian guests in particular. Most striking of all was the figure in the cornflower-blue dress on the stage, her head bent down and golden hair falling in front of her face as she bowed a cello with absorbed intensity.

'Sarek,' Amanda said in a hushed voice, turning towards her husband. 'Isn't she incredible? They didn't provide musicians when we were here last!'

Sarek levelled his gaze for a few moments on the woman on the stage before taking another sip of his pale green drink.

'Yes, it appears she is an excellent musician in addition to her talents as a nurse,' he nodded.

'As a nurse?' Amanda echoed, staring at the woman again.

'It is Nurse Chapel,' Sarek said calmly. 'She who attended me in sickbay on our previous visit.'

'Really?' Amanda stared harder, and as the woman's head lifted for a moment she saw the familiar face. 'Oh, it is, isn't it? Well, I never would have expected – '

'It is not uncommon for a person of higher intelligence to be proficient at music,' Sarek reminded her.

'No, of course not,' Amanda smiled, wondering if Sarek was reminding her of _his_ talents at multiple instruments, or perhaps of their son's. She touched her fingers to his, and was rewarded with a surprising surge of affection through the bond. 'Sarek?' she said questioningly, meeting his gaze.

'Yes, my wife?' Sarek asked innocently. So skilled was he at shielding that she could not tell if the innocence was real or fake.

She turned back to the musician on the platform, slowly discerning familiar traits of the nurse she had grown to like during those long hours in sickbay. The bend of her neck, and the hands that were as skilful on the bow as they had been while tending to Sarek. The woman had been very fond of Spock – that had been obvious – and Amanda had very much approved of the potential in that pairing. If only Spock could be persuaded to act on it…

She glanced sideways, knowing by some maternal instinct that her son was nearby. She saw Spock standing some metres away, staring at the nurse with a transfixed expression on his face. He was drinking the same Malovian vodka that Sarek was enjoying, from a tall, fragile glass, but barely seemed aware that he was doing so, so focussed was he on the woman on the stage.

'Well, that's nice to see,' Amanda said quietly to Sarek, directing his attention towards his son.

Sarek raised an enquiring eyebrow, and seeing where she was looking said, 'Yes, Spock has always had a keen appreciation for music.'

'Of course,' she smiled. It seemed that Sarek was blind to all signs of love except for those between himself and his wife.

Sarek's eyes turned to the level of alcohol in her glass, and asked, 'More vodka, my wife? The flavour of this beverage is surprisingly refreshing.'

She demurred briefly, and then said, 'Do you know, I think I will? Thank you, Sarek.'

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It was later in the evening that she noticed Sarek's behaviour becoming unusual. The music had stopped some minutes ago, and Captain Kirk was trying to engage her husband in conversation, discussing some of the finer points of the upcoming conference. Sarek's attention seemed to be wavering, however, and more than once she caught his eyes burning on to her with an intensity that he usually reserved for more private situations.

'Well, Amanda,' Kirk said finally, realising that he did not have Sarek's full attention. 'I hope you've enjoyed this evening as much as the diplomats. We tried to make it an entertaining one.'

'Oh, it was lovely,' she smiled graciously. 'I was very impressed with the talents of your crew. Mr Sulu, I think, told me that some of the artworks were painted by crewmembers?'

'They were,' he smiled, and reached out to touch her arm, turning her towards one of the paintings nearby. 'This one, for instance, was – '

'Remove your hand, Captain.'

Sarek had spoken so low that for a moment the captain didn't seem to realise he had said anything at all. Then he turned to look at the Vulcan, a startled expression on his face.

'I beg your pardon, Ambassador?'

Amanda could feel the sudden waves of emotional intensity pushing through her husband's shields.

'Remove your hand from she who is my wife,' Sarek said with greater clarity.

Amanda looked at her husband in astonishment as Kirk's hand dropped from her arm.

'I apologise, Ambassador Sarek,' the captain said quickly, obviously wondering which Vulcan custom he had trodden over now. He suddenly seemed to think his dress uniform collar was very tight, and pushed a finger beneath the braided circle.

Sarek blinked, for a moment appearing confused, and then he said slowly, 'No, Captain. It is I who must apologise. I cannot fathom – '

Amanda took his half-empty glass from his hand, smiling a smile that would put most diplomats to shame.

'Perhaps it's time to retire, my husband,' she said lightly. 'It's been a long evening.'

'Yes, of course,' Sarek said, still in that distracted voice. 'If you will excuse us, Captain?'

'Of course,' Kirk murmured, puzzlement still showing on his face.

Sarek's hand was tight on his wife's arm as he steered her out of the room. The fact that he was not touching her fingers in the ritual way was surprise enough, but Sarek almost never let his physical strength out of his very precise control.

'Sarek, are you all right?' she asked him in a low voice as they passed into the corridor.

'I am fine, my wife,' he replied – but she could hear the slight steel undertone of impatience in his voice. 'Amanda, our cabin is very far away,' he added, his impatience breaking through even further.

'Are you sure you're feeling all right?' she repeated, her concern increasing. Their cabin was only a short ride away by turbolift, and then a few hundred yards down the corridor. 'Your heart – '

'My heart is surprisingly vigorous tonight,' he assured her, looking her with a gaze that was meaningful but undecipherable. 'I have had no problems since McCoy's excellent surgery – you are aware of that, Amanda.'

'Yes, I know, but – ' she began.

'Must you question me on every utterance?'

His voice was loaded with impatience and she looked at him in astonishment. If she hadn't known better she would have said he was acting as if… Her mind faltered. No, really, it had only been six years since the last Time, and the periods between grew longer as Sarek grew older. It was completely impossible…

'Amanda, is that the pool room?' Sarek asked abruptly, looking towards a door on his left.

'Sarek, I'm sure the _Enterprise_ doesn't have a pool!' she exclaimed.

Really, he seemed to be losing his mind. She was becoming seriously worried. There's was Bendii Syndrome in Sarek's family, she was certain of it. Surely he couldn't be unlucky enough for that degenerative disease to follow the heart condition?

'My wife, did you read none of the literature left in our cabin when we took residence?' Sarek asked, the exasperation clear in his voice now. 'The Malovian people require full immersion at least once every twenty-nine standard hours. A pool room has been set up to that end, and all guests are welcome to use it.'

'Really?' Amanda asked, her eyes glinting. Swimming was a rare pleasure for her on Vulcan, where water was scarce and treasured.

'In here,' Sarek said, his grip on her arm tightening further as he took her through the doorway.

The air inside the room literally took Amanda's breath away. Hot and humid, it filled her lungs like something solid, leaving her speechless for a moment. Someone had filled the edges of the room with luscious trailing plants, their flowers in full bloom and wafting alien perfumes out into the air. And in the centre was a turquoise jewel – a pool that was, perhaps, a storage container redressed, but redressed so skilfully that there could be no complaints about functionality intruding on this luxurious space.

'Sarek, I don't have a costume,' she began in regret.

Sarek engaged the privacy lock and turned an intense gaze on her. His eyes seemed to burn right through her clothes.

'No matter, Amanda,' he said. 'Neither do I.'

'Oh, I'm not sure – ' she began.

Sarek was already beginning to unfasten the thick and formal jacket he was wearing. She took in a sharp breath as he peeled his undershirt from his body. Even at over 100, he never failed to allure her, and now, caught in the intensity of whatever it was that had taken hold of him, the sight of him sent shivers through her spine.

'Sarek, what on earth has come over you?' she asked.

He was down to his underwear now, and stripping that off with fervour. She could feel through the latent mental bond that he was deeply aroused – and now she could see it too. He reached out his fingers to her and she touched them, feeling the underlying tension humming through his skin.

'My wife, attend me,' he said in a low voice.

She glanced briefly at the door, and then back at her husband. His eyes were blazing with fire, but she had no fear despite his strength and determination. There was still a kindness and the softness of love behind the flames.

Her mind made up, she took her fingers briefly from his to strip off her clothing and join him in his nudity. His arms wrapped around her, the gentle strength in his muscles always arousing, and she felt the heat of him against her. And then he drew her off-balance and she found herself suddenly immersed in warm water, her hair billowing out behind her in the currents and Sarek's arms still holding her firmly against him.

'Oh,' she spluttered as they rose from beneath the water. She could feel the insistent hardness against her body. 'Sarek – '

He silenced her by pressing his lips to hers, the heat of him burning against her. He was hungry – overcome by a raging hunger to encompass her body. She fell against him, the water cradling her and his arms holding her tight as his lips moved down her neck, his teeth nipping at her skin, his fingers searching across her body like a blind man.

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'Well, I've certainly never done that before,' Amanda said with a broad smile as she towelled water from her hair.

Sarek sat at the side of the pool in silence, his chest rising and falling slowly as he regained control of his breathing. As Amanda watched him she was struck by the dignity that still reigned in his countenance. He looked more like he had got out of the pool after a carefully measured amount of laps than after impulsive intercourse in the warm water.

'My wife, it is hardly an uncommon – ' he began.

'In a pool, on our son's ship, with nothing more than an inch of door between us and the corridor outside?' she asked him, smoothing her hair down and looking about for her clothes.

She was perfectly warm, but she felt self-conscious sitting naked in this supposedly public space, afraid that someone would come in despite the lock. She began to struggle with her underwear. The humid air had left her clothing damp and difficult to pull on.

Sarek's eyebrow raised, and he watched her appraisingly as she struggled to untangle her clothes while the fabric rolled on her damp skin. He seemed to have no concerns with his own clothes. He was not even moving to put them on. Instead he was just sitting, watching her with intense eyes.

'Sarek, are you going to dress?' she asked him.

'It wasn't the first thing on my mind,' he admitted, obviously gaining pleasure from watching her awkward gymnastics with the damp clothing.

The look in his eyes was one of fire again, and she caught her breath as his gaze pulled her in. That mixture of impatient, amorous lust was intoxicating.

'Sarek, you're insatiable!' she exclaimed, half laughing, before asking in a more concerned tone, 'Are you sure you're all right? I mean, we enjoy a healthy sex life, but this is unlike you…'

'Is it unlike a male to desire his woman?' he asked.

'Well, no – ' she began. She was getting nowhere with rational arguments tonight.

'My wife,' he said as she stretched her arms up, trying again to unravel her tangled clothing enough to get it over her body.

And he was suddenly against her again, his fingertips soft but firm on her face, his mind reaching into hers. She felt it again – that deep, uncontrollable fire that she knew only from pon farr. He was still crawling with need, with the urge to lie with her and taste her and explore her body as if it were a new thing to him. There was a dark haze in his mind, veiling his rational thought and turning everything into wordless sensations and impulses.

'Sarek,' she murmured against him, feeling her own body reacting again to his urgency. 'Sarek, really, we should go to our quarters…. Sarek…' And then as he touched her physically as well as mentally she breathed, 'Oh lord…'

She was slipping back onto the floor, feeling it hard and unyielding against her shoulders and back, and Sarek was atop of her, his breathing coming hard again, the haze growing in his eyes as he sank his mouth over hers and kissed her with something approaching violence. What clothing she had managed to don he was pushing aside, his hands all over her body and his mind threaded into hers. His pulsings of desire had become hers, his fire had become hers. They were breathing in synchronicity, his skin hot against her skin, and as he entered her she lost herself again in the force of his passion.

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It proved to be a long night. Amanda rose with her head muddled with lack of sleep, her body sore and aching in a way she had not experienced since Sarek's last Time. She was used to the heat of Vulcan, and used to Sarek adjusting his room settings on alien ships to Vulcan normal – but this morning the air felt stifling and unbearable.

Rising from the sheets she saw a flashing at the bedside computer, indicating a communiqué waiting to be read. She turned on the screen, and as she read a look of dawning comprehension grew on her face.

She glanced across at her husband, lying in the tangle of sheets in a deep and natural sleep. It was little wonder he was exhausted. After they had returned to their quarters Sarek had proved himself to be by no means satiated. Between them they had grasped very few hours sleep.

Sarek's eyelids half opened, and he looked at her, a moment of realisation passing through his eyes, coupled with a fleeting expression of pain.

'Amanda, I am – ' he began.

'Don't tell me you're sorry,' she said firmly, a smile brightening the tiredness on her face. 'I haven't had a night like that in – well, in far too long. My love, you were wonderful.'

A hint of a smile touched her husband's mouth. 'But still, I do not know what it was that made me so – '

'Horny?' she asked him. 'I know.'

She turned the computer screen towards him, and he blinked, beginning to sit up and focus his eyes on the tightly-written text.

'A message from Dr McCoy?' he asked, and she nodded. 'Could you relay the substance?' he asked. 'I seem to be suffering a rather severe headache…'

'A hangover, Sarek,' she told him bluntly. 'It's called a hangover. I don't think you've ever had one of those, have you?'

He made to shake his head, and then thought better of it.

Amanda sat down beside him, silently offering him a glass of water.

'Welcome to the human world,' she smiled. 'According to Dr McCoy, you maybe be suffering some unexpected results from the consumption of Malovian vodka. Symptoms include – apart from a severe hangover – a noted elevation of certain hormones in the Vulcan system, and a probable occurrence of the symptoms of pon farr.'

Sarek's eyes widened.

'No, Dr McCoy did not use those precise words,' she smiled. 'He's far too gracious a gentleman to step on that particular Vulcan taboo. But that's undeniably what he means.'

'Does the good doctor prescribe a treatment?' he asked weakly.

'I think, Sarek, we indulged in the treatment last night,' Amanda said pointedly. 'Other than that, my dear husband, I prescribe copious amounts of water for you, and that you try to sleep it off. _I'm_ going out for coffee.'

To her surprise Sarek did not even protest. He finished the glass of water he held, and settled back into the pillows. If he had been human, he would have moaned.

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Amanda could have stayed in her assigned quarters for her morning coffee, but in her state of tiredness the near-Vulcan heat was unbearable, and the cool in the recreation room was like a balm. Even so, she barely felt awake as she took a steaming cup of strong coffee from the replicator. She took her first sip, and the invigorating effect of the caffeine began to enter her bloodstream.

She turned to face the recreation room, looking about herself for a table, hoping she did not look as exhausted as she felt. She saw Spock almost instantly, sitting on the other side of the room and looking, to her experienced eyes, considerably worse for wear. Catching his eyes, he nodded at her, and then dropped his gaze with a look that she recognised as a peculiarly Vulcan kind of embarrassment. She realised then that he was sitting at a table with Nurse Chapel, and as Christine looked up Amanda echoed the nurse's spontaneous smile.

The thoughts seemed to crowd in her mind in a millisecond. _Malovian vodka. Spock drinking it last night. Sarek's reaction. The reaction, according to McCoy, of all Vulcans to that spirit._

Her eyes widened momentarily, and she saw the same look of realisation light simultaneously in Christine's eyes. There could be very few reasons that the nurse would have that reaction, and she knew the most likely one...

Aware that her mouth had dropped open, she snapped it shut, and left the room before the blood she could feel rushing to her cheeks manifested itself in a blush.

In the corridor, she stood leaning against the wall, taking deep, refreshing gulps of the coffee and letting her thoughts settle in her mind. Spock and Nurse Chapel. Her son, and that delightful woman, sitting together after a night of – well – her mind baulked at imagining that night too fully, but perhaps Malovian vodka could only be counted as a good thing in Vulcan's international relationships…


End file.
